Rumble's incompetence
by CockyPocky
Summary: Rumble pisses off Poppy. So he tries his best to make it up to her.


In his workshop within the institute of war Rumble was fast asleep. His eyes were slowly opened by the sound of banging on his door. He tried to ignore the rapping and go back to sleep, but the noise only got louder and louder. Whoever was at the door was determined to get his attention.

"Quit it with the knocking!" he yelled.

"Rumble, it's me. Please open the door." the girl behind the door pleaded.

Rumble sighed. Of course it was her, who else wakes him up this early? He barely got any sleep last night due to staying up late and attempting to modifying Tristy's flamespitter. He was hoping on sleeping all day but it seems she had other plans. He eyed his workshop. It was incredibly messy and cluttered, with various papers, parts, tools and other things scattered all around his room. Rumble had never been one for organization. He hoped she wouldn't mind all this mess. He begrudgingly got up from his desk, hoping that her visit would be a quick one. He tried to move around his unorganized room, but since he just got up from an all nighter he could barely see. So he just moved around aimlessly, hoping to not get himself hurt. It worked great, until he tripped over one of his spare toolboxes causing him to faceplant on the floor.

"Are you okay!?" she cried out.

"I'm fine, don't worry."

He got up from the floor and proceeded to open the door for her. There stood his lover, Poppy. She was clothed with her thick armor as always. Rumble never understood why she never took it off. Whenever he asked she would just always brush it off with a "Better safe than sorry!". Rumble had to always look up to greet her as she was quite massive for a yordle, along with being much taller than Rumble (to be fair any yordle was taller than him). Poppy was also incredibly strong too as her size indicated. Sometimes to tease him she would throw Rumble into the air then catch him bridal style. It always put him in a bad mood. As for Rumble, he was the very opposite of Poppy. He was small, weak, frail, angry, lonely. Rumble was a lot of things, and rarely were any of those things pleasant. Despite their differences being night and day, they enjoyed each other's company and fell in love with each other. Poppy was always there for Rumble and cared deeply about him, even though they fought a lot (usually started by Rumble being an ass). Despite Rumble being an all around jerk, he tried his best to be good to her. Some days he failed, rarely did he succeed and some days he would bad-tempered all day and didn't care that much. Poppy didn't mind his grumpy attitude all that much, she knew deep down he had a heart of gold and would never let down the people he cared about. And as much as he hated to admit it, she was absolutely right.

She stood there with a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of juice in her hands, wearing that naive smile like she always does. She looked quite happy to see her beloved, Rumble on the other hand, not so much. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and let herself in. As Rumble shut the door Poppy already made herself comfortable. She pulled out a chair for herself and laid the meal on Rumble's desk. She motioned for Rumble to sit next to her.

"Sorry about waking you up." she apologized.

He only grumbled in response to her.

"Here." she said as she took the oatmeal from his desk and placed it in his hands. "I got up early to make you breakfast.

Despite him being half awake even he was able to notice a crucial detail was missing.

"Where's the spoon?" he asked.

"Darn, I knew I forgot something! I'll be right back!"

Rumble sighed as she left. As much as he loved her he really hated how forgetful she was along with her constantly waking him up early. In the meantime, he decided to inspect his breakfast. He moved the bowl around.

" _She put in way too much milk."_ he thought.

Curious, he put his finger inside of the oatmeal and twirled it around. He took it out and put it in his mouth to get a good taste before making a disgusted face.

" _Too much sugar too."_

He wondered about the juice. He reached for the glass and took a small sip. It tasted like a weird mixture of oranges and apples and was a bit too far on the sweet side, but still bearable. The oatmeal was the main problem he needed to worry about. He really didn't want to eat it. But he also really didn't want to piss off Poppy too. He had pissed her off too many times these past couple months and didn't want to continue his bad streak. She was special to him, and he hated breaking her heart. There was no way he could avoid eating it without hurting her feelings too. He was thinking of a way out of eating the oatmeal when she returned.

"Here you go." she said as she handed him a plastic spoon.

He looked at her. She looked so innocent and cute. She was beaming with pride and joy too. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't hurt her. He decided to just suck it up and eat. He dug the spoon into the bowl and and fished out some oatmeal. When he put it in his mouth, he froze. It was just as disgusting as he imagined. It was way too sweet and undercooked. It felt like eating sugary water with a little bit of oat flakes sprinkled across. But he still swallowed it. He forced a smile directed at Poppy.

"It's good." he said. "Just leave the cooking to me please."

She nodded happily. He took in another spoonful. The worse part about this was trying to maintain his happy expression with Poppy watching over him the entire time. He was about to take in another mouthful when Poppy told him to stop for a moment. She then pulled out a piece of paper. Rumble shot her a confused look.

"Oh, it's just a poem I wrote for you." she said shyly. "Can I read it to you?"

He nodded to her as he set aside the oatmeal to wash the taste out of his mouth with the juice she brought him.

"Rumble. That name makes me so happy. I love it so much. I want to be with you forever and ever." she read. "How was it?"

"Pretty bad." he said nonchalantly as he sipped on the juice.

Her cute happy smile turned quickly into a frown. It took Rumble a few seconds to process what he said.

"Oh alright." she said dejectedly.

" _Fuck"_ he thought. He really shouldn't have blurted that out without thinking.

"No, not like bad bad. More like a good bad. Like a 'so bad it's good' type of thing you know?" he said nervously.

"So is it bad or good? I'm confused." she said.

"It's perfect."

"Are you lying to me?"

If there was one thing he hated it was pissing off Poppy. Rumble never thought before speaking, making it so hard to avoid making her angry. It made him always blurt out stupid stuff that Poppy would get offended by. He decided to just tell her the truth at this point. He couldn't save his ass anymore. It'll only get harder and harder to lie from here on out. He sighed and put his arm around her.

"I love it. I absolutely adore the effort you put into it." he said. It wasn't a lie as in his eyes as he genuinely did appreciate the thought behind it. He gave her peck on the cheek, hoping to ease her mood. It didn't seem to do much as Poppy seemed unfazed by it.

"..."

She was silent, thinking of some sort got up from her seat and started at Rumble. She picked him up and laid him on the ground then climbing onto him, pinning his arms against the floor with her strong hands. She glared at him, analyzing his expression to determine if he was lying or not.

"It feels like you're lying to me." she calmly stated.

"Why do you say that?"

"Your body is tensing up, I can feel it. That's something people do when they lie, I think?"

"Well to be fair this a pretty suggestive position."

"Tell me the truth, are you lying or not?"

"Of course not."

Rumble's mouth said one thing but his expression said the opposite. He was nervous, face forcing a smile and refusing to look her in the eyes. Luckily Poppy was able to detect on how bad of a liar he was. This revelation made her get up from him and curl her ball into a fist from anger.

"So you are lying!" she yelled out in frustration. "I can't believe you would do something like this! What happened to be the honesty between us?"

"It was just a small lie to protect your feelings. I'm sorry for looking out for you!" he yelled back.

"I can look out for myself, I don't need you to watch over me!"

"I was just trying to be nice!"

"You can try being nice by being honest!"

"Look." he paused for a moment to take a breathe in. "I'm very sorry about saying how bad your cooking was, okay? I still like it and I think it's the thought behind it that matters." this comment only added to Poppy's bad mood.

"You think that's what this is all about? I don't care about how bad it was. I care about how you lied to my face. I can handle being told my cooking is bad. How weak do you think I am?" she growled.

And with that, Poppy stormed out of the room in silence. She slammed the door behind her as she left. He stared at the door for a while after she had left. He felt awful, sure she would always forgive him after an hour or two but the feeling of pissing her off always stung. You'd think because of all the times they've fought before Rumble would care less each time, but not really, it was horrible each and everytime.

He dumped the oatmeal into his nearby trash can, but since the can was full of junk the oatmeal just bounced off the garbage and split all over the floor. He sighed. Now he'll have to clean that up later on. But for now, he laid back his chair and finished his juice. Unsatisfied with its taste, he reached for his desk and opened up its drawer. Pulling out a flask, he chugged its contents while throwing the glass in the air to land somewhere in his workshop. Even though it shattered, he really didn't care about the mess or the danger of broken glass. All that mattered right was how he messed up. He knew he should've been more honest with her. But now he paid the price.

" _...No._ " he thought. " _I can make things better._ "

He opened up the drawer again and pulled out a notebook and began to draw out a plan of sorts. This time was gonna be different. He wasn't gonna sit by idly while waiting for his partner to forgive him. No, he was gonna do something so amazing, so spectacular something that will make her wonder why she ever got mad with him ever. She'll be on her knees, begging for his forgiveness. Being the great boyfriend he is, he'll accept her forgiveness. They'll then kiss and makeup. While it may not exactly go like that, Rumble was fairly certain it will end up along those lines. Rumble does something amazing for her, she loves him for it, they have kiss and they never fight again. Sounded pretty easy.

There were multiple notes all throughout his page all with different ideas. Most of them involved him building something for her until he realized Poppy's not into technology so those all had to be scrapped. He considered Poppy to be a simple but humble girl. So something simple, but from the heart will impress her. This decision make him rip out his page and start again from scratch. Starting off small, he wrote down things she liked. He remembered Poppy likes doing good, protecting people, being humble, him, sweets, her ham-, wait that was it! He's an been cooking a lot recently ever since he bought that cookbook. He considers himself to be at least decent at cooking now. He can make her a romantic dinner just for the two of them in his place back at Bandle. It'll be just like their first date. This was definitely the plan to win her heart! He got up to find Poppy and tell her all about it, but remembered how he angered her. He was probably the last person she wanted to see right now. Instead, he'll just write her a letter and ask Tristana to give it to Poppy. Finishing up the letter, he left his workshop and into the halls of the institute of war.

* * *

He looked around for a bit. It was taking him forever to find her. He thought about how much easier it would be to just slip the letter under her door but that seemed like such a boring way of doing things, plus, she probably wasn't even in her room.

It took quite a while but he eventually found Tristana. She was banging at yelling at a vending machine for some strange reason.

"Hey Tristana!" he called out.

She turned around and to see him, then turned back to the machine. It seemed she didn't care much about him right now.

"Hey Tristana, you mind giving this to Poppy?" he said, waving around the letter.

"Uh yeah sure in a sec." she responded.

Tristana was trying to reach her hand inside the slot of the vending machine. Rumble realized she must've gotten cheaten by the machine. This would've been the perfect time for him to go on a rant about humans and their faulty machine work but he decided to let it slide seeing how he was in a rush. As he saw Tristana struggle to reach for her candy bar, Rumble rolled his eyes. He went to the side of the machine and kicked it with the heel of his boots, letting the candy fall properly. Tristana saw this and smiled with glee. She grabbed the candy excitedly and opened it up.

"Thanks Rumble! I should've remembered how good you are with machines and stuff." she said with a mouthful of food.

Rumble smiled at that comment, letting it sink in and inflate his ego. He handed her the letter meant for his girlfriend.

"What's this?"

"It's a letter for Poppy. I need you to deliver it."

"Why don't you just give it to her yourself?"

"I have no idea where she is, also I pissed her off again."

"That's like the billionth time you've done it. You seem to be pretty good at this whole romance thing."

"Trust me after this, she'll never get mad at me again."

"Suuuure. Whatever you say" she said in a mocking tone.

"Just ditch the sarcasm and please give her the letter."

"Yes sir!" she saluted.

Rumble chuckled. He remembered why he took such a liking to her at first. But he didn't have time to reminisce. He was on a schedule. As he left the hall Tristana called out, "Can I read it!". Rumble called out back with a simple, but effective, "No!".

Rumble left the institute of war after that. He hopped on a train to Bandle. The ride should take two hours to get to Bandle, but he should still have enough time to get everything ready to accomplish his plan. After this, Poppy will love him so much. She'll never get cross with him again.

The only hard part would be relying on Tristana to deliver that letter, everything else should easily fall into his plan.


End file.
